Accept Credit Cards on Your Site

With an online merchant account, you can increase your sales simply by accepting credit cards online.

Most of the online websites you see nowadays that sell products or services accept credit cards - this combined with auction selling has made credit cards a multi billion dollar industry. Read on and you'll discover how you can accept credit card payments online yourself - it's not as difficult as it may first seem.

More and more people use their credit cards for online shopping - it's easy, convenient and quickly becoming the standard form of payment. With a secure server, the buyer feels more comfortable with the credit card transaction process and is more likely to buy from you.

Choosing a Online Merchant Account Service

There are a lot of credit card scams online these days, websites claiming to be large companies, serving millions of customers. Do a Google search on the credit card company name and domain and see what results come up and what other people have to say about the company. People usually leave their comments about the companies in forums or their websites which is accessible to Google and other Search Engines. If you are still not sure about a company, do a WHOIS search of the company domain. And see if their profile looks real enough to be trusted, you can do WHOIS search for free on www.Whois.sc

Before opening an account in a credit card service, look at the company's rates. Some companies are good for auctions, Some for subscriptions. You have to count the transaction charges with your product price. If you are selling products online or selling on eBay, then look at the companies where you have to pay a low percent charge and your buyer doesn't have to pay a lot, like Paypal.

Paypal doesn't charge your buyers and has a very low charge for premium or business accounts. Some sellers use Bidpay, A Western Union company which is trusted but is designed for online auctions. Bidpay also has a very high charging rate for buyers which might cause you to lose customers. If you have a very large budget and have more customers, then 2Checkout is an optimal payment system which accepts credit cards without any charges - but does not accept payments from Paypal Accounts which might be a problem for some of your customers. (It's always a wise idea to provide 2 or 3 payment services for your customers; this will increase your sales.)

Service Availability

There are many companies which only accept customers from specific countries, so always look at the availability of the service in your company and your currency, which could help you save money by exchanging currencies. Paypal accepts most of the countries which serve credit cards or have an international branch. There are also many alternatives for countries not accepted by Paypal to accept Paypal services for a fee. You also have to look for the time it takes to withdraw your money to your bank account or credit card. Paypal, Bidpay, and other american companies can transfer your money with in 3-5 days to any major country. However, if you are in a country where it will take weeks to transfer your money, you should look for another alternative.

Credit Card Service Integration

Integrating the credit card service to your website saves your customers time. Look for shopping cart systems which can calculate all of that the details the customer needs, like the shipping costs, charges, taxes, etc.

If you are selling large amount of products online and know that most of your customers will use credit cards, then 2Checkout is a service for you. It is just like a payment service that your customers would use like a credit card machine. There are a lot of free and commercial shopping cart and payment systems written for the 2checkout system in all PHP, ASP, PERL languages, like OsCommerce.

If most of your customers are using Paypal, then you can integrate Paypal into your website using pre-made scripts - or you can design one yourself. If you are going to use a script for Paypal, make sure you can trust the script company and that the script is reliable. The Paypal system is easy to hack if you are not using encryption. It's recommended that you contact a Paypal IPN Expert before integrating the service to your website to make sure the system is safe and integrated properly.

Most of the shopping cart systems support multiple payment services like Paypal & 2Checkout and are able to integrate more payment services. OsCommerce is one of them; it has secure payment and it's service and is used by thousands of shopping companies all over the world.

Website Securing & Licensing

Licensing your website and securing your payment service is required if you are going to be promoting your business. Most people who want to purchase online prefer trusted and secure websites. Getting a license for your website is becoming a lot easier now. Online credit card services like Paypal offer easy to use account verification services; you can be verified just by entering your credit card information and putting the paypal verified logo in your website.

If you are considering to invest in a Secure license for your website then Verisign has the Solution for you. VeriSign licenses are also another way to show your visitors how secure your website is and they are considered to be the most secure and recommended websites available by internet websites and Gurus.

Trusted and popular Payment Services:

• Paypal
• 2Checkout
• Bidpay

Jack Freeman, DolbyDesigns